Desire Is Not Vision
When I was a teenager, I read a remark by Chen Danqing that stayed with me. As I remember it, he said there was nothing wrong with wanting a big house, a nice car, or an attractive partner. But he made a distinction between wanting those things and having a vision for your life.
I did not stop wanting things. The line stayed anyway. It gave me a way to ask what was actually driving the chase.
Desire, as I lived it then, often meant accumulation. You get the house, then notice a bigger one. You get the car, then the next model looks sharper in the ad. There is nothing wrong with wanting these things. The trouble is that each purchase can leave you wanting the next.
What I later started calling vision was more specific: wanting to build a particular kind of building, or understand one problem deeply enough to solve it. Those aims did not always promise more money. They gave me something to stay interested in beyond the next purchase or comparison.
From the outside the two can look identical: long weeks, companies, setbacks. The motives can be mixed, too. Wanting recognition does not rule out caring about the work. I do not think I can reliably tell what drives someone just by watching them.
I have chased things because they signaled success. Some of those pursuits left me energized; others just left me tired. The ones that lasted were tied to curiosity rather than a sense of what I ought to want. I still have to ask myself whether I want the work itself or the life I imagine it will give me.